FINAL REPORT
Berlin, 26. May 2012 – The winning formula has worked again: Free software, open thinking and the creative atmosphere of Berlin have once again lead to a successful LinuxTag. With an increase in visitors of around 10 per cent more than the previous year, Europe’s leading exhibition and conference on topics relating to Linux and Open Source software has come to an end at the 26. May. For four days, a miscellaneous and challenging program was offered to the 12,624 visitors from all around the world at the Berlin fair grounds.
The halls were not only full for the four keynotes, but also for the other 200 events of the free lecture program. 187 experts from 17 countries passed on their knowledge about the new developments about Linux and Open Source software. The booths of 41 companies and 80 free projects were very busy during the exhibition.
“Despite the Internet and social networks, the direct exchange between users and developers and between providers and users is needed more than ever. Thereby the LinuxTag plays a special role”, said Ingo Wichmann, 1. chairman of the LinuxTag association. “The increase in ticket sales proves that the event develops even further in terms of the Linux-Community. For this purpose we will again need the support of volunteers, partners, exhibitors, speakers, projects and sponsors. We have many ideas that we want to implement in the future.”
Petra Kuhfuß, project manager of the LinuxTag at the Messe Berlin, sums up: “The LinuxTag has strengthened its outstanding reputation as a platform for software releases, marketplace for ideas and meeting point for the community this year. It also distinguishes itself increasingly as a discussion forum for new thinking approaches in the policy and new solutions for an effective management. For this purpose, members of the German Federal Parliament and the House of Representatives of Berlin, high-ranked management professionals from all over Germany and Internet activists have made important contributions.”
News in exhibition and conference
Just in time for the LinuxTag, a number of companies and projects have presented new software. Thus the Thomas Krenn association presented two Open Source plugins for the surveillance of server hardware and GPUs. The init association from Berlin was present with its new DIALOG BOX for a safe, efficient and easy implementation of public participation projects on the Internet. The ownCloud-Community announced the release of owCloud 4 and the members of the Project Navit presented their iPhone-Port, with which their Open-Source-navigation-software now runs on this smartphone.
Main topics of the free lecture program included Android-projects, enterprise storage with a special perspective on SDD-disk as well as tools and methods of the system management such as monitoring and configuration management. Among the highlights of the lecture program was the keynote by Ulrich Drepper, maintainer of the GNU C Standard Library Glibc. He reported, for the first time in front of a large audience, of the changes in the GCC 4.7 in terms of transactional memory and gave advice to developers how the technology can be used profitably.
Education and further education also played an important role in other formats of the 18. LinuxTag. Thus, for the first time, workshop and beta-testing of the LPI Linux Essentials were offered. The Academy-Day was specifically aimed at new IT talents. Special events such as the Hacking-Contest, the Kernel-Kwestioning with many present Linux developers, the Key-Signing-Party, as well as numerous workshops rounded up the program of the LinuxTag 2012.
Voices of exhibitors and conference participants
Akim Boukhelif, Community Developer, Aldebaran Robotics: “We are at the LinuxTag for the first time and very satisfied. We had many interesting contacts and conversations, for example, with visitors from Italy, France, Switzerland, Great Britain, Belgium, Tunisia, Algeria, the United States and Germany. There were requests to book our NAO-robots for events and to collaborate on joint projects. We would like to take part in the next LinuxTag.”
Peter H. Ganten, Chairman of the Board, OSB Alliance – Open Source Business Alliance association and CEO, Univention PLC: “We are striking positive balance. The companies were able to socialize with communities and also to find potential employees. We had the opportunity to hold a number of interesting background conversations, for example with politicians as well as representatives of the Federal and Provincial Governments.”
Lenz Grimmer, Senior Product Manager, Oracle Linux, ORACLE Germany B.V. & Co. KG: “We have presented interesting new features of our products to visitors at the LinuxTag 2012. This concerned particularly the Oracle Linux operating system, MySQL, Java, Virtual Box and Solaris. We had many interesting conversations and were able to inform in the lecture program about current developments. We are very pleased with the interest of the visitors.”
Matthias Albert, Head of IT Engineering & Operations, inovex PLC:
“In line with this year’s LinuxTag, representatives of B1 systems, DELL and inovex met and discussed about the possible foundation of an OpenStack Community for the German-speaking region. Thereby, special topics, ‘distributed expertise’, ‘best practices’ and ‘German mailing lists’ shall be treated. Meetings like this show the great strengths of the LinuxTag, as the conversation context for cross-border cooperation between manufacturers, companies and projects is offered.”
Daniel Molkentin, Nokia employee and stand manager of the Qt-Project: “Our App-Contest, in which the developers are meant to send in ideas and prototypes for mobile apps, has found strong support. Several dozen proposals were received in the course of the LinuxTag. Among them were many great ideas, for example, a program for TV series fans, as well as a free WhatsApp client. The LinuxTag is a great opportunity to share such creative ideas and to directly discuss with the developers.”
Klaus Behrla, CEO, LPI Central Europe: „Our tests have again been very well received during the LinuxTag, even better than in previous years. This affected both the LPI and the new Essentials-tests. At the end of the exhibition there will be approximately 50 Essentials- and 140 LPIC-exams.”
Frank Karlitschek, Founder and Project Manager, ownCloud: “The LinuxTag is a very good platform to both meet our users as well as to collaborate with other projects. We have experienced a lot of interest, especially due to the release of ownCloud 4. Our corresponding presentation was also very well attended.”
Karsten Hoffmeyer, Stand Organiser CAcert at the LinuxTag: The LinuxTag went very well for us. We had a lot of interested parties who have not only informed themselves, but who have also joined the Web of Trust and therefore take part in the CAcert-community.”
Andreas Mantke, Deputy of the Board of Directors, The Document Foundation: “We are very pleased with the visitation of our stand. We had interesting conversations with visitors and developers. Also the lectures in the Office Track, which enlightened both the Office Suite as a whole, as well as future developers, were very well attended and led to interesting discussions.”
Thomas Laube, Team member, ubuntuusers: “We had again many regular visitors at our stand, who come to see us every year. The large range of visitors was very interesting. It ranged from students with very specific questions to school groups, who we helped with their WLAN-problems, to absolute beginners who had questions about the operation.”
Alexander Halle, OTRS-Commnity: „Our community has how existed for one and a half years. The LinuxTag 2012 was something special, as we have established ourselves this week as a union and have already been at the notary. In the coming year we will not only celebrate our one-year anniversary, but also ask for a stand and a presentation.”
Premiere for new event formats
This year, three new event formats had their premiere: The business formats Open Minds Economy and open valley berlin as well as the RootCamp Berlin. The Open Source Business Alliance, whose members make the case for sustainable value creation through open forms of the collaboration in the industry, economy and society, is behind the concept of the Open Minds Economy. At the LinuxTag they offered a special track in the lecture program and provided information at a joint stand of the OSB Alliance.
In line with the new format open valley berlin, new IT-innovations and success stories “Made in Berlin” were presented. The RootCamp Berlin was the first thematic BarCamp for Linux/OSS-users and administrators.
The LinuxTag has become more political
The experiences in the use of Open source in public administration also played an important role this year at the Business- and Public-Authorities-Conference of the LinuxTag. A representative of the city Treutlingen reported “Ten years of Open Source in the communal administration” and an employee of the City Council of Munich answered the question “How does Linux get business-ready on the desktop?”
Already during the opening ceremony of the LinuxTag 2012, Andreas Statzkowski, IT State Secretary in the Senate of the Interior of Berlin, spoke about great chances for the use of Open Source for the approximately 350 different specialized procedures in the administration. About the new event program “open valley berlin”, Statzkowski said: “This has been initiated by the regional ICT sector to enhance the location and to give a face to the vision of the Silicon Valley Berlin.”
The panel discussion on current issues of the network policy came across great interest. Several members of the German Federal Parliament and members of the Enquiry-Commission “Internet and digital society” discussed with members of the House of Representatives of Berlin and the network activist Markus Beckendahl about the role of Open Source and Linux in public facilities and the attitude of the parties. Apart from that, issues like net neutrality and copyright came up. Jimmy Schulz, Chairman of the project group “Interoperability, standards and Open Source” of the Enquiry-Commission about Interent and digital society in the German Federal Parliament, dealt with the digital participation, with which the parliaments and parties want to regain the lost confidence in his keynote.
Philip Brechler of the pirate group in the House of Representatives in Berlin spoke on Saturday about the topic “Computer in the parliaments.”
The Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology, Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, had again taken over the patronage of the LinuxTag.
About the LinuxTag
The LinuxTag is Europe’s leading exhibition and conference on topics relating to Linux and Open Source. The four-day event has been taking place since 1996, annually on the Berlin fair grounds since 2007. It offers updates for professional users, decision makers, developers, beginners and the community. The LinuxTag association is the ideal host for the event and is doing so alongside with the Messe Berlin VLC. For more information pelase visit http://www.linuxtag.org/2012/en.html.
The next LinuxTag is taking place from the 22. until the 25. May 2013.